As Plants Grow Up in Their Youth – Sunday, August 30, 1942
As we send our children off to school, there to spend many of the hours of their lives, many parents are suspected of unburdening a sigh of relief. We are busy people, we parents, especially these days, and with the great pressure of life upon us, too many of us fondly suppose that when we turn our children over to the school or some other public agency, our responsibility ceases.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Too many of us suppose that it is quite all right to let the children grow up in their own way—that wrong tendencies, resulting from early neglect, may easily be corrected when they get older—that, after all, they’re only children and there is no use worrying about these things too early in life—no use crossing bridges until we come to them—when they are more mature in years we can more easily shape their attitudes, and teach them to be what they ought to be.
Such is the false reasoning that is altogether too prevalent. This business of being a parent is not merely a biological process. It is a life-long siege of sacrifice, patience, painstaking love, and sound teaching both by precept and example.
The traits of character which early become evident in a child are frighteningly persistent, and if you want to make a noble and useful man you must begin by making a noble and useful boy. If you want to make a virtuous and lovely woman, you must begin by making a virtuous and lovely girl—and it takes more than food and clothing and shelter, more than four walls and a roof and a name, to do this thing.
This isn’t a new idea. It isn’t a product of modern psychology. It was a well-established principle many centuries ago when the writer of proverbs, reputed for much wisdom, expressed the thought in these words: “Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.” (Pro-verbs 20:11) And helpful and indispensable as they are, it isn’t the schools that are going to make a righteous and a noble generation.
No teacher can do what a parent has failed to do. Such work must begin long before the school enters the picture and must continue unceasingly within the walls of sanctified homes, so that, in the words of David of Israel, “our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace.” (Psalm 144:12). And so, as we send our children once more to school, there must be no feeling that they are now a public charge and that we are relieved of responsibility—for such is not the case and never can be among any people who expect high character and nobility in the coming generation.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Aug. 30, 1942, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1942.
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August 30, 1942
Broadcast Number 0,680